Dunk the Little Man!

I can't believe no one's asked me about Theatre Bay Area's JumpStart, where you can dunk theatre critics. Well, OK, my sister asked me about it, and now hopefully I can get her techie boyfriend come play Iron Stage Manager or something.
But yesterday I just found out that Chronicle Pink Pages editor Joe Brown has agreed to be dunked--and he's apparently going to wear the head of the Little Man!
He's such a sport. Last year Joe met with a bunch of people from the theatre community at the SF Playhouse to discuss the Little Man and how Chronicle coverage could be better. He came out on stage with the Little Man head (I guess the Chron trots the Man out to special events as if he were a Disney character), and said, "I brought you the head of the Little Man," to much cheering.
This is just too good--who wouldn't want to dunk the Little Man? Come on! I swear I need to play Girl Scout and sell 5 tickets, just 5 little tickets.
JumpStart is June 13 from 8-11 at Exit Theatre, 186 Eddy St., SF. $20 in advance. Let me hook you up: karen-at-theatrebayarea.org.

SF Intl Arts Fest, part 1

You know when you hear about performance festivals—whether it be dance or theatre or whatever—and you hear the pr spin about how great it is that there are all these fabulous groups and how fun it is to run around from performance to performance because you just never know what you’re going to see? And you spend all weekend running around, and at the end you’re like, So?
Well, the San Francisco International Arts Festival isn’t like that. And that means something coming from someone like me who’s been through almost 10 years of theatre festivals and has several banker’s boxes full of press kits. I’ve been to two shows in the past two days (not nearly as many as some of the other press members), and they were both shows I’m glad I didn’t miss.
Last night the AKHE Group (Russia), performing White Cabin, started with the empty space of Project Artaud Theater and quickly created their own surreal world, and then proceeded to practically trash the place with newspaper, water, alcohol and even fire (don’t worry, just paper burned). The premise of White Cabin is whether a spectator can influence what is happening onstage by his or her presence (as it says in the program notes). Well, I’m not sure I had any hand in the show, whether I was there or not, so if you’re looking for any narrative in the piece, you’ll be quite infuriated. But what I was taken with was the seeming anarchy of the piece: string weaving back and forth across the stage, a guy dressed in newspaper that falls away, a woman apparently representing the audience sitting in front of a swinging mirror with the other two actors throwing things at her. But where it really gets interesting is when they create the white cabin: three white squares with smaller squares cut out of the center hang from the grid, and video of puppets, historical documents, photos, anything, projected while the actors play in the center square, essentially integrating themselves into the video, creating layers and layers. It may not be successful, but it was really damned interesting to watch.
And even though I was kinda ambivalent about White Cabin, tonight, as I was having dinner at the Last Supper Club before heading to Dance Mission for Fabrik Companie’s (Germany) Pandora 88, I was actually looking forward to what I would see next. Now, if I had been ambivalent about any other play I saw last night, which doesn’t really differ from most of the plays I see, I would have been dragging myself out tonight.
And again, I was totally taken with Pandora 88. This is the one with the two guys in 1.5 square meters of floor space. They started with a simply elegant effect: they were in the box, and with the aide of side lighting, they flashed hands, heads, arms in and out of the light, so the parts looked disembodied. Simple, but really cool. OK, I’m paying attention. The program notes calls the box “their homeland, their prison, sanctuary, projection screen,” you get the idea. So they basically go through all the stages of being confined. Play, anger, depression, hope. They climbed over each other, bracing themselves on the sides of the box, in a fluid dance that looked a hell of a lot easier than it actually was. The box wasn’t simply an upright box to them: it floated in space, turning, and they played with those dimensions well. And they ended it perfectly.
I’m totally sold, but unfortunately I’m only scheduled to see the Erling Wold piece on Thursday. But you can still see White Cabin and Pandora 88 on Saturday and Sunday (5/21-22). If you’ve seen anything else, tell me about it.
This is the sort of work we should be seeing year-round in the Bay Area.

Fun With Kittens

Ever since VH1 ran those VH1 kitten promos (I highly recommend scrolling down to The Ramones on this page, even if you have to watch a commercial first, or watch Viking Kittens without a commercial), I'm a sucker for anything regarding kittens and amusement. Special thanks to Boing Boing (who thanked someone else) for providing me a good half hour of entertainment tonight.
Kitty Cat Dance
Kitten Attack (slightly twisted)
Kitten Bounce (even more twisted)
Pinky the Cat (always a classic)
And here's one our good friend, the editor at Radio Free Mike, should like.

Black Box Theatre Live!

Drum role, please.
Black Box Theatre.com has relaunched! Let's give a huge hand to Cheshire Dave for the keen design and technical savvy.
On this site we have descriptions of all of Trev's plays, and of course, Working for the Mouse has a huge presence. You can also find excerpts from the scripts and all of the reviews (the good ones, anyway). Phase two will include audio and video clips--those will be cool.
Now I don't have to be embarrassed by a woefully out-of-date site with a boring design. Wow, I may even make it my homepage. And, best of all, I don't have to update it myself. I highly recommend hiring a designer, especially Cheshire Dave, of course!

A Week Till Radar

Well, I actually almost forgot about it, but Radar magazine will hit the stands on May 24. And, a little peek at its site reveals that, yes, the Disney story is in the first issue.
Ya think we would have gotten an advanced copy?
Well, Gawker did, and has plenty to say about it. Like, how it lacks a compelling premise or angle: "(Disney castmembers are actually really people that drink and smoke and have sex?! Paris Hilton is famous for doing nothing?!)"
Oh come on. You can never get enough Disney, drink and smoke. Well, maybe you can, but sex, that's another thing.

Can Art Make You Spell Better?

OK, I'm not making this up.
On the California Arts Council site, right here, if you scroll down, you'll find this headline:
Solano County Club Encourages Literarcy.

Macbeth

There are a handful of theatre companies that I would say are indispensable to the local scene, and Cutting Ball is one of them. Artistic director Rob Melrose has a unique aesthetic—call it dark, twisted and sometimes hopeless. (Someone else called it “sex and death.”) Perhaps Last Planet, who just got a SF Weekly “Best of SF” last week, is the closest thing to Cutting Ball out there on the fringe of fringe theatre.
Cutting Ball usually brings us the likes of Richard Foreman, Mac Wellman, Suzan Lori-Parks and this twisted guy named Kevin Oakes who writes such plays as The Vomit Talk of Ghosts. This time Melrose re-envisions Macbeth. Now, Melrose excels at fully integrating set design, lighting design and sound design—even if he doesn’t do all the design himself. Walk into Exit on Taylor and you see a stark white set with five doors. Macbeth as farce? I wonder.
Nope. Now, of all the times I’ve seen the Scottish Play, I’ve never seen any director glom onto the idea that the Macbeths lost their baby, but that is at the forefront of the Cutting Ball production. Suddenly, this is a play about the subconscious, the doors and visions in the mind. Doors lead to different parts of the house, but they also lead to a sinister forest full of visions. There are no Weird Sisters except the ones conjured by Lady Macbeth.
The production isn’t perfect, but it is intriguing.
I’d like to see at least two other companies out there in direct conversation with Melrose’s work, because it’s certainly sad to think that without Cutting Ball, we’d lose a whole swath of experimental theatre.

Dunk Me & Other Critics

Commercial break:
Theatre Bay Area is having a party and you're all invited! June 13, 8-11PM.
JumpStart 2005 is a party at the Exit complex featuring live music, beer, cocktails and some insane contests--trust me, you won't want to miss these.
We've got Iron Stage Manager, especially for those special breed of people that can deal with any major emergency with three minutes to curtain. Then we've got a Quick Change competition, which is pretty self-explanatory and has the potential to be pretty hilarious. Then we have the Dialect Dash, in which you have to cram as many recognizable (key word) dialects into a speech as possible. I'm sure the party committee will be thinking up some others, too.
Oh, did I mention a dunk tank? Yep, believe it or not, we're having a theatre critics dunk tank. Yes, some local theatre critics are really cool and volunteered for this! Apparently, I volunteered for the dunk tank too, even though I'm not really a critic. So come get me wet. I dare you.
All of this is a fund-raiser for Theatre Bay Area's new theatre awards, which will launch in 2006 (hence all the silly contests and the dunking of the critics).
Anyway, I've got to sell 5 tickets to this thing (I feel like a Girl Scout). You can buy tickets ($20) online here: http://www.theatrebayarea.org/tba/jumpstart.shtml, but you can also drop me a comment or a line and I'll set you up.
Please come!

Three Little Men

At the risk of being pelted by mushy vegetables….
The SF Chronicle’s Little Man is universally reviled in the theatre community, most obviously because he directly affects box office. Yes, it appears that though an “excellent” man boosts box office, many companies want to do away with the Little Man on theatre listings because anything less than “good” kills box office. What the Chron editors can’t get through their heads is that there’s not really five little men, but three. They think a “good” Little Man is just that: good. But he’s a three out of five: a “C.”
And why does the public really see three Little Men instead of five? Well, I’m afraid all you have to do is look at the theatre listings in the Pink Pages. How many Little Men “positions” do you see? Three. Now, let’s give a ton of credit to Rob Hurwitt for not assigning local theatre the napping or, heaven forbid, an absent Little Man. But when we see three Little Men, a “good” man is suddenly a “don’t bother.”
Of course, the way to make a “good” Little Man good is to give other shows a napping or, heaven forbid, an absent one. And we don’t really want that, right?
Well, this week the napping man reappeared, for Menopause, the Musical. Now, I haven’t seen the show, so I’m not going to comment other than to say that Hurwitt acknowledged that this is no show for a critic, and that audiences loved it. Heck, all the more reason to give it a napping man--besides, it’s a commercial show, not a show by an earnest but scrappy local company trying risky stuff.
So, because Menopause is an ongoing show, the napping man will now reappear in the Pink Pages each week. Will a “good” man suddenly look good again? Is this the only way for a “good” man to look good? Because I’ve been thinking about this “three Little Men” problem for a while, and I can’t seem to come to any good solution. Any comments? No vegetables, please.

May 14-22 Preview

I took a bit of a break this week, after seeing I Am My Own Wife and Hannah and Martin, for Mother’s Day, which included visiting my grandmother, always a bit of kitchen table drama, I must say.
However, tonight is Macbeth, a Cutting Ball production, which, knowing AD Rob Melrose, will have a sharp interpretation. I hope so, I’m getting a bit tired of Macbeth, and it’s not even summer yet.
Next week, finally, it’s the SF International Arts Festival! I’m already down for the Akhe Group’s White Cabin on Thursday and Fabrik Companie’s Pandora 88 on Friday. Taking a brief day off Saturday for my sister-in-law’s wedding (boy did she go crazy with her Bed, Bath & Beyond gift registry), and then on Sunday is the Foundry’s Capacity from Shallowness. Next week is Erling Wold.
Which means I’ll miss the gala opening of Octavio Solis’s Santos & Santos at Teatro Vision, which he’s directing. Jim Sanchez plays the lead; he worked in my office briefly and I’ve only seen him in a staged reading where he played a Southern bigot, but he played a damn good Southern bigot, so I’m very interested in seeing this performance.

Nazi Germany

Of course, the main reason to see I Am My Own Wife, running at the Curran through May 29 is Tony Award-winning actor Jefferson Mays, who delivers a hell of a mesmerizing performance as Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, and dozens and dozens of other characters. His transitions are so subtle yet so effective, it really is a master class in solo performance. The play won all sorts of awards, from the Tony to the Pulitzer, but quite frankly, I think it fell a little short of the hype, as a script. (A little quibble, but nonetheless, I have never seen a panel discussion or a TV talk show work onstage. In this case, Charlotte appears as a guest on a talk show, which is an effective way to show how some of the public turned on her years after the war, but it just throws the movement and energy of the play off.)
A colleague of mine attended opening night with several friends, one of whom had visited Charlotte’s museum in Berlin and had several photos of the place. They waited at the stage door afterward to show Mays, who apparently was thrilled to see the evidence. Perhaps Radio Free Mike, our American in East Berlin, has more information on the current status of the museum.

Continuing our tour of Nazi Germany, I didn’t have high hopes for Hannah and Martin at San Jose Rep, partly based on a preview feature in the Pink Pages that didn’t exactly give a whole lot of compelling reasons to see the play, but was very pleasantly surprised. The play chronicles the affair and ongoing tempestuous relationship between philosopher Martin Heidegger and his student, later a great thinker in her own right, Hannah Arendt. On opening night, Stacy Ross gave a stunning performance as Hannah, where she negotiated the emotional terrain of both confronting her former teacher and the ambiguities of her feelings about him. She transcended the formulaic script, which included a skull-cracking hand-washing scene—though I will concede the scene could have been read as literal or ironic. In any case, Ross seemed moved at curtain call—I wouldn’t assume to say she looked angry or shaken, or anything that would suggest she was anything less than professional, but had such an expression that you knew she was completely present and very much committed to every bit of her performance.

May 2-8 Preview

It's Sunday night, I've had half a weekend, having gone into the office on Saturday to do some database cleanup, and my deadlines are on Tuesday and I have a couple of features to write and some previews, which I should do now, but I just don't want to work all the time! I just finished sending the last files to Cheshire Dave so he can finish our website, and I should probably balance my checkbook. And, I put U2's How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb into my CD drive, and it's stuck. The computer can't read it, and it won't eject. Bad U2. That happened with Interpol's Antics, but at least it spit it back out.
I've been pushed to the back of my apartment, because that's where the computer is, but also because my upstairs neighbors (OK, landlords) are having a party. They have a piano in the front of their flat, and they have some very good friends who used to be part of the SF Opera chorus...OK, maybe one of them was actually in the chorus, and the rest of them wish they were. One guy starts banging on the keys (and stomping on the pedals, which I can hear just as well) and then the "sopranos" start in. I really like my landlords--they invite us to these parties, which feature incredible Russian cuisine and vodka. So I should just take the shots, nibble the caviar, and shut up.
Oh, so theatre. Both ACT and Best of Broadway decided to have their press nights on Wednesday, which is unusual for Best of Broadway, they usually do Tuesday. So, because my pals at ACT accommodate me well anytime, I had to go for I Am My Own Wife at Best of Broadway. The play won a shitload of awards in 2004, including the Pulitzer and two Tony Awards.
Thursday is Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, which my friend won tickets to from Voice of Dance. And she invited me! Cal Performances is like the only company left that doesn't give out press tickets very readily, especially to the B-list press (nonreviewing), of which I'm a proud member.
And, Friday may be Hannah & Martin at San Jose Rep, if only to see the brilliant Stacy Ross. The Pink Pages ran a piece about the play...I must say it doesn't really sell the play at all.
Of course, I'll have to go back and pick up Moon for the Misbegotten at ACT, because we can't miss Marco Barricelli's last performance as core company member! Apparently in previews an audience member held up a sign during the curtain call: We'll miss you Marco. Ahhhhh.

One Window

You've got one week left to see One Window at Intersection for the Arts, Erika Shuch Performance Project's piece. Go see it. I can't remember the last time I was so enthralled. The "special to the Chronicle" liked it too, but said she crams a lot into the piece, implying that this is detrimental. I've decided that when someone says "it tries to do too much," that it can only mean that that person couldn't figure it out and decided the fault belonged with the choreographer. And there is a lot: dance, theatre, beatboxing, beatboxing mixed with an accordian (!), bit of musical theatre, and even set building in real time. But, damn, she earns every bit of it. I don't know how old she is, she looks young, and I'm thinking she just can't be this brilliant already.
People are surprised when they hear how much theatre I go to, and I think that I'll look back at my boxes and boxes of press kits and think how lucky I am that I didn't spend these years barhopping instead. Sure, I'll probably have forgotten most shows, but One Window, that's one I'm going to feel damn lucky to have gone to. Especially when Erika Shuch reaches the status of say, Margaret Jenkins. Then I can say that I saw her do this crazy, beautiful, transporting piece in little Intersection.